Teaching Youth About Food Justice: A Madison Wisconsin Story

I had the fortunate opportunity to design and implement curriculum for the Michael Fields Agriculture Institute; the goal of the program, Growing Urban Leaders in Food Systems, is to engage high school students to be leaders and change agents in transforming the food system, particularly as it relates to public and social policy. In this quest, I was invited to  pilot one of the lessons that I designed with the a summer youth leadership program hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison PEOPLE (Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence). We worked with 

PEOPLE interns and teachers to ensure that the lesson we taught aligned with current programming needs. We learned that the students had a wide-range of experiences from visiting local farms and community centers, to becoming generally more aware of the wide range of agricultural employment opportunities that are available, typically not promoted to low-income students. Here's how the lesson went and how the students responded. 

We began with having students defining food justice in pairs and then as a class. Some individual and group definitions that emerged were: 

• "Food Justice is ..... something that makes you feel good for eating healthy/good." 
• "Food Justice is..... when people want to be over weight then they want to blame the law."
• "Food Justice is..... a variety of choices made by a community to create unity around healthy        food. " 

We then went onto create a classroom definition synthesizing group responses. Our classroom definition of food justice that emerged was: 

• "The right of everyone to access healthy food through good security and laws that maintain the process of distributing food equally."

Next, we invited students to volunteer to the front of the classroom; we handed students either a water bottle or a plastic container with Driscoll raspberries for students to interact with. Students were presented with a multiple choice question which had to do with either Flint Water Crisis (which had in previous pilots really piqued students interest) and farm worker rights with Driscolls. In order for youth to see the learning target, we modeled a food justice role-play and then had students use a rubric to evaluate our presentation of the Dillema. 

Students could choose from the following food justice issues and topics: 

• Land Grab: Hantz-Off Our Lands
• Restaurant and Worker Rights 
• School Lunch and the Mystery Meat Dilemma 
• Farm Worker Rights 

After students formed groups and we provided a conflict resolution framework to use (we had students use the acronym S.T.A.T.E. to resolve the dilemmas in each situation) the room was buzzing with students choosing clothes and props in which to use, writing their lines and a script, and deciding who was going to play which role. When it came time for each group to present their dilemma through role-play, the first group to go included a student that was actually sleeping in the class the day before. He was a totally different person completely engaged in the role as a district administrator ensuring that the lunch-lady was serving newly adopted organic and GMO-free lunches. Not only did the group do an outstanding job of building empathy for the character they played, but also began to see that resolving conflict could be achieved through a process of dialogue and understanding. 

So many thanks to George Reistad, PEOPLES teachers, and of course, the brilliant youth who jumped right in.  We've still got plenty of work and revisions to do for our curriculum, however when you set students up for success by providing relevant and engaging experiences such as food justice role plays, students enjoy learning for all the right reasons.